Publications related to Robot locomotion

Distributed Predictive Formation Control of Autonomous Rotary-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles

This doctoral thesis navigates the complex landscape of motion coordination and formation control within teams of rotary-wing Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). Prompted by the intricate demands of real-world applications such as search and rescue or surveillan ...

EPFL2024

Sense in Motion with Belief Clustering: Efficient Gas Source Localization with Mobile Robots

Alcherio Martinoli, Wanting Jin

Given the patchy nature of gas plumes and the slow response of conventional gas sensors, the use of mobile robots for Gas Source Localization (GSL) tasks presents significant challenges. These aspects increase the difficulties in obtaining gas measurements ...

2024

Quantifying the biomimicry gap in biohybrid robot-fish pairs

Francesco Mondada, Vaios Papaspyros

Biohybrid systems in which robotic lures interact with animals have become compelling tools for probing and identifying the mechanisms underlying collective animal behavior. One key challenge lies in the transfer of social interaction models from simulatio ...

2024

Online Multicontact Receding Horizon Planning via Value Function Approximation

Sylvain Calinon, Teguh Santoso Lembono

Planning multicontact motions in a receding horizon fashion requires a value function to guide the planning with respect to the future, e.g., building momentum to traverse large obstacles. Traditionally, the value function is approximated by computing traj ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2024

Robot Learning using Tensor Networks

Suhan Narayana Shetty

In various robotics applications, the selection of function approximation methods greatly influences the feasibility and computational efficiency of algorithms. Tensor Networks (TNs), also referred to as tensor decomposition techniques, present a versatile ...

EPFL2024

Hitting with Different Joints of a Robotic Manipulator

Aude Billard, Harshit Khurana

This paper builds up the skill of impact aware non prehensile manipulation through a hitting motion by allowing the robot arm to come in contact with the environment with parts other than its end effector. Hitting with other joints allows us to manipulate ...

2024

Investigating neural resource allocation in the sensorimotor control of extra limbs

Giulia Dominijanni

The rise of robotic body augmentation brings forth new developments that will transform robotics, human-machine interaction, and wearable electronics. Extra robotic limbs, although building upon restorative technologies, bring their own set of challenges i ...

EPFL2024

A Biohybrid Superorganism - Investigating honeybees' collective behaviors via interactive robotics

Rafael Botner Barmak

Social insects, such as ants, termites, and honeybees, have evolved sophisticated societies where the collaborative efforts of "simple" individuals can lead to the emergence of complex dynamics. The reliance of each organism on the collective is so great t ...

EPFL2024

Memento Mori: Reliable robustness in self-reconfigurable modular robots

Kevin Andrew Holdcroft

Modular robotics link the reliability of a centralised system with the adaptivity of a decentralised system. It is difficult for a robot with a fixed shape to be able to perform many different types of tasks. As the task space grows, the number of functi ...

EPFL2024

Multi-Robot 3D Gas Distribution Mapping: Coordination, Information Sharing and Environmental Knowledge

Alcherio Martinoli, Chiara Ercolani, Thomas Laurent Peeters

Environmental monitoring and mapping operations are an essential tool to combat climate change. An important branch of this domain concerns the construction of reliable gas maps. Adaptive navigation strategies coupled with multi-robot systems improve the o ...

2023

Beyond undulation! Body morphology and sensing components of elongated animals and robots reveal skills to maintain competent locomotion

Laura Isabel Paez Coy

Locomotion is an essential evolutive innovation of living beings that allows them to colonize and dominate the planet. As diverse as animal morphologies are (living) and were (extinct), their locomotion modalities are also diverse. In particular, animal mo ...

EPFL2023

Neuromechanical Simulations of Animats with Decentralised Control

Jonathan Patrick Arreguit O'Neill

The transition from aquatic to terrestrial environments represents a significant event in the history of evolution. For this transition to occur, animals had to adapt their morphology, physiology and locomotory skills to handle the challenges and interacti ...

EPFL2023

Multi-robot task allocation for safe planning against stochastic hazard dynamics

Maryam Kamgarpour, Orcun Karaca

We address multi-robot safe mission planning in uncertain dynamic environments. This problem arises in several applications including safety-critical exploration, surveillance, and emergency rescue missions. Computation of a multi-robot optimal control pol ...

IEEE2023

Identifying important sensory feedback for learning locomotion skills

Auke Ijspeert, Guillaume Denis Antoine Bellegarda, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani

Robot motor skills can be acquired by deep reinforcement learning as neural networks to reflect state-action mapping. The selection of states has been demonstrated to be crucial for successful robot motor learning. However, because of the complexity of neu ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023

Motion Planning and Inertia Based Control for Impact Aware Manipulation

Aude Billard, Harshit Khurana

In this paper, we propose a metric called hitting flux which is used in the motion generation and controls for a robot manipulator to interact with the environment through a hitting or a striking motion. Given the task of placing a known object outside of ...

2023

Resilient drones with morphing wings

Charalampos Vourtsis

Winged aerial robots and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) commonly referred to as winged drones and drones, are increasingly used in a wide range of professional and non-professional applications today, spanning from civilian to military. As a result, they ...

EPFL2023

Puppeteer and Marionette: Learning Anticipatory Quadrupedal Locomotion Based on Interactions of a Central Pattern Generator and Supraspinal Drive

Auke Ijspeert, Guillaume Denis Antoine Bellegarda, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani

Quadruped animal locomotion emerges from the interactions between the spinal central pattern generator (CPG), sensory feedback, and supraspinal drive signals from the brain. Computational models of CPGs have been widely used for investigating the spinal co ...

IEEE2023

Training Efficient Controllers via Analytic Policy Gradient

Dario Floreano, Valentin Wüest, Davide Scaramuzza

Control design for robotic systems is complex and often requires solving an optimization to follow a trajectory accurately. Online optimization approaches like Model Predictive Control (MPC) have been shown to achieve great tracking performance, but requir ...

New York2023

Inferring individual evaluation criteria for reaching trajectories with obstacle avoidance from EEG signals

Aude Billard, José del Rocio Millán Ruiz, Fumiaki Iwane

During reaching actions, the human central nerve system (CNS) generates the trajectories that optimize effort and time. When there is an obstacle in the path, we make sure that our arm passes the obstacle with a sufficient margin. This comfort margin varie ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Avian-Inspired Claws Enable Robot Perching or Walking

Dario Floreano, Won Dong Shin, William John Stewart, Mohammad Askari

Multimodal unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are rarely capable of more than two modalities, i.e., flying and walking or flying and perching. However, being able to fly, perch, and walk could further improve their usefulness by expanding their operating enve ...

2023